Trip to Chicago MS&I

This year we decided to give Jacob an "experience" for his birthday. Early this morning we packed up the family and drove 3 hours to Chicago to visit the Museum of Science and Industry. Both Jared and I had visited there as kids and had really enjoyed it and thought our kids would too.

Just driving up to the museum was impressive. I had forgotten how big and beautiful the outside of the building was. As kids you don't appreciate that stuff but I seem to more as an adult.

There were so many things to see and touch. Some of the highlights were:

• Visiting the toy factory and watching our own gravitron being built by robots. And of course since it was ours it had to have a failure and shutdown the entire assembly line. The technician came over and fixed the problem and it continued down the line. The kids enjoyed watching it get built from start to end.
• Seeing a real submarine and 727 airplane up close. These were all inside the museum.
• Watching a HUGE model train set complete with the Chicago skyline and lots of working trains.
• The "princess dress" made entirely out of LED lights. Allison enjoyed that one.
• Brandon enjoyed one of the exhibits that projected bubbles on a wall that you could manipulate and move around by standing two feet back from the wall and moving the bubbles with your shadow.
• Eric was amazed at the thermal imaging camera and watching himself on it. We always knew he was a hot head!
• Jacob enjoyed the navy aircraft carrier that had a control room they got to play in.

We had a wonderful time and will definitely go back. This was the first time we went someplace like this without a stroller and diaper bag. It was very liberating!